Once upon a time, I used to believe my gut feel about motorsport was pretty ok. Until I did a bit of an experiment. In order to test my gut feel, I waited for the next F1 season to begin and rated every newly launced car on a scale of 1 to 10. Based purely on gut feel. And not explicitly taking past performance of the team into account (I still believe one does this implicitly - in a back-of-the-mind kind of way). Importantly, I made the judgements before the car had turned a wheel.

Boy, was I surprised. I was actually pretty far off in most cases. And thinking back through the years, there's been times I've been pretty spot on and other times I've been far off.

Voted <= 1. I suck.
Only time I was right was in the Schumacher heighdays. But you didn't have to be a prophet to foresee a Ferrari domination throughout 2001 and 2005. Otherwise I am usually so far off it is nearly ridiculous.

Basically, I got right only seasons that were fairly easy to get, like Alonso winning 2006., Button 2009. or Vettel 2011.

However, I'm solid at predicting race events. I knew Hamilton 2007. China and staying on worn tyres was a huge mistake, I knew that on last lap 2008. he would overtake Glock (my biggest fear was that he doesn't crash with Vettel in end of the race).

1971: Le Mans: I told my mother (being a 10 year old boy) on saturday evening (After the Dutch Radio had told some two hours before that Le Mans was being run and that the Dutch driver Gijs van Lennep was among the leading pack) that I believed that Gijs van Lennep was leading. I am not sure he was at the time I told my mother this but he did win the race. Childish wishful thinking being fulfilled?

1982: GP Austria. All weekend long I had to think about De Angelis and Lotus, despite them not having turbo-engines on a track suited for turbos.

1984: now that weekend could have made me rich: The weekend of Le Mans and GP Detroit. Strong feelings about the winning car being co-driven by Henri Pescarolo, no matter who his teammate was and what he drove. And about Piquet for the GP.

1998: I read in Autosport that Luyendijk had signed up for the Daytona 24 hours with Momo in a a 333SP. Somehow I felt it was gonna be a great race for Arie but that he won it still came as a surprise..

2011: Bump day at Indy. I sat in Turn One the last two hours to follow qualifications. In between there was some practice too and Dan Wheldon was one of the drivers who went out for practice. No other driver entered Turn One so smooth and gently and went throught the turn so snmooth and near effortless. Other drivers threw their car in th corner but not Dan. When I saw that I pointed it out to my mates and told them that if he could do such on Race day too that he would be a very strong candidate for victory. Dan became my first choice behind the Penskes and Target cars since that were the powerhouse teams. They were my first options based on tradition and facts but dan became my darkest of horses.

I'd give myself an 8. If I'm going to go with how I thought this year would shape up...

The teams I feel I was very much in the ball park with:I thought that Red Bull would still be strong, but I wished that they wouldn't be as dominant.McLaren's car looked fast and sleek at launch, so I assumed they would be in the fight.Ferrari didn't wow me and I expected them to have an average/good year (in Ferrari terms).I thought that the Sauber looked decent enough and that they'd have some good drives.Wrote Toro Rosso off (mostly due to bitterness for sacking Jaime) because I never expect much from them.Caterham. I didn't feel that they would make a huge leap forward, but they would definitely be ahead of HRT and Marussia.Marussia, right where I expected. I suspected that they would slowly be caught by the HRTs just like last season.I expected HRT to be slowest overall at the start of the year (as usual), but would make huge gains on Marussia (as usual).Mercedes. I'm a huge fan of them and I've been playing up their chances once they started hiring lots of former technical directors. I knew they'd improve.

The teams that I was very wrong about:Lotus. I expected them to be fighting for positions 8 through 12 or 13 each race. Didn't expect several podiums at all.Williams. I thought that they were only going to continue their decline, but they've made a sharp leap forward this year. Good for them!

the night before the brazilian gp of '07, I had a dream: Kimi leads Massa and Alonso, Hamilton off to the mid-pack, and Sato went off the track to demolish trees from the forest next to the track ( ) and Trulli followed him. got the podium and Hamilton right, and iirc Sato had an off in t1, and Trulli as well, a bit later?

Had a gut feeling that:
Kimi would become WDC in 2007. Correct.
Spy gate would disqualify both Lewis and Alonso out of the WDC. Wrong.
Lewis would become WDC in 2008. Correct
Massa would be WDC in 2009. Wrong.
Jenson would be out of F1 after Honda leaving. Wrong.
Vettel would be WDC in 2010. Correct.
Rosberg would beat Schumacher. Correct.
Lewis to win Spa. Correct and made £70
Jenson would win Monza 2010. Wrong, but close.
After Korea 2010, Alonso would now win WDC. Wrong.
Vettel would be WDC in 2011. Correct.
Title would be decided at Japan. Correct.
Jenson would beat Lewis in 2011. Correct
The MP4-27 would be the best car at the start of the season.
Vettel would be WDC in 2012. ????
Lewis would bounce back heavily against Jenson. So far Correct.
Rosberg winning a race this season. Correct.
Perez is the next big thing. Correct.
Schumacher to retire after 2012. ????

On some online betting game on a forum I put a large amount of money on Kubica winning Canada 08, and led most of the championship. I decided to put everything on the winner of the penultimate GP however since there was no prize and blew it all, so a mixed bag.

Voted 7 for myself.
Historically I have had some good matches and predictions here and there, but this season in F1 I scored low number of points in the predictor castrol game. Perhaps we need a thread for sharing our scores (I'll start one shortly).

I predicted Button would go to McLaren about 4-5 months before it happened, does that count? I remember just randomly thinking it one day, and then it happened a while later. It was a premonition I tell you.

I'm pretty rubbish at picking results, especially in the Pirelli era where there seems to be less logic and general trends in car performance. I did expect Mark to bounce back this year v Vettel, and for Grosjean to outperform Kimi. Schumacher's decline was pretty obvious too, bad luck notwithstanding.

I predicted that Hakkinen would crash immediately before he actually did in the 1999 San Marino Grand Prix. I also predicted the Hamilton would crash during free practice at Suzuka last year just before it happened (it was in the Live Chat if anyone remembers). Apart from that, not so good.